See first chapter for the usual disclaimers.
Potiens Interdiu, Potiens de Nocte – Latin; Potions by Day, Potions by Night
Jean Bodin – Jean Bodin was a demonologist born in Prague in 1529 and gained fame as an occultist for his book, Demonomaie des Sorcies, in which he promoted and defended sorcery and witchcraft It was published in Paris 1581, and again at Wiort in 1616 as Fleau des Demons et des Sorciers. For more information on Bodin, go to the Mystica ). (This is an awesome site, and indispensable for both fanfic and fantasy writers!)
Bilanx et aboleo – Latin; 'balance and destroy'.
Tonique de curatif – French; roughly, tonic of healing.
Archibald the Lightheaded – This fellow was rumoured to know a charm that would keep a dog from barking and help to open a lock. According to the Index of Mystica, this charm was 'especially useful to young men during their courting days'. People thought Archibald was insane because he would mutter the charm so fast no one else could understand it.
Grissell Gardner – Grissell Gardner was indeed burnt as a witch in 1610, in Newburgh. She was the ancestor of a man named Gerald B. Gardner, who was a prominent Witch and head of several covens in the 40s and 50s.
AN: Oh, beautiful, wonderful people that run FFN, THANK YOU for fixing the Quick Edit thingy! We have LINE BREAKS! ::dance of adulation::
Say hello to chapter four. Thanks for the reviews, everyone – although, Amscray, I have to say I was rather mystified at yours!
chapter four
She got down to the dungeons and Snape was already there.
"Have you been waiting long?" Lily asked, adjusting her grip on her satchel.
Snape shook his head. "No. Follow me."
She did so, and as she followed him into an old disused room with cavernous dimensions she realized that he had already set up. There, sitting on a low worktable that looked a splinter away from being tripedal, was a cauldron, a small collection of different-sized bottles, an array of various instruments – a pestle, several different knives, and at least three spoons, each fashioned out of a different material – and a small stack of books Lily didn't recognize.
"Professor Eberwulf gave me leave to make use of this chamber," Snape said, his voice echoing slightly in the chamber. "It's in poor condition, but it'll serve its purpose. Don't put anything on that end of the table," he warned her as she made to set down her satchel; "the leg on that corner is especially unstable."
"So I see," Lily said as she saw the table wobble. She moved down further and began taking her potions things out of her bag. "I don't suppose there are any chairs in here?"
Snape gestured towards an alcove hidden in the shadows at the end of the room. "Stacks of them," he said. "But most of them are rotted to bits."
"Oh." She finished laying out the rest of her potions kit. "What are we going to be doing this evening?"
Snape raised an eyebrow. "You," he said, putting a brittle emphasis on the word, "are going to make a standard Warming Draft."
Lily looked up at him. "Why?"
"I want to see exactly how appalling your brewing skills are," Snape said bluntly.
Lily frowned, but she knew better than to be too offended. Translating Snape-speak into a more civil tongue, she decided he was saying that he wanted to know what he was dealing with, where her weak spots were. A perfectly reasonable idea, masked by a nasty remark. She could deal with that.
"All right," she said, shrugging off the rudeness – after all, she couldn't possible expect Snape to change his attitude just because they had an arrangement. "A Warming Draft. Right-o." Warming Drafts were on the first-year syllabus, quick to brew and quite simple; she knew the recipe by heart. She began selecting the necessary ingredients out of the small selection she had brought with her: chicken teeth, dried radishes, and cinnamon.
"I'm afraid I don't have any…." Lily began.
"I do," Snape said, pushing a little pot into her line of vision. Fresh salamander skin.
"Oh, thanks. I would have brought some…."
"Just get on with it," Snape said as she assembled the rest of the ingredients. "And halve the recipe." When she looked up at him inquiringly, he said, "So it'll fit into a single bottle. I don't want to waste anything."
Lily shrugged and did as she was instructed.
"You're forgetting something," Snape said as she reached for a knife with which to slice the radish.
Lily glanced around. What was she…? Oh, yes! Water. The water had to boil before any ingredients could be added. "Oh, right," she said sheepishly. "Um… a sink?"
"Behind you," Snape said. "There's a pump."
A very old pump indeed. The water came out pink with rust, and Lily waited until it rushed clear before putting the cauldron beneath it.
She brought it back to the table and lit a blue fire beneath it, and commenced preparing ingredients. She could feel Snape's hollow, beetle-black eyes on her the entire time she sliced and diced and chopped and measured, following the movement of her hands as she worked. And as she did, she found her attention slipping away from her work and more in the direction of the boy who was scrutinizing her.
A sharp reprieve told her he had noticed her lapse in concentration. "Pay attention," he barked as she almost scattered another teaspoon of crushed beetles over the roiling surface of the Warming-Draft-in-progress. She jumped, and hastily redirected her hand to put the beetles back in their jar. "Sorry," she muttered.
"Tell that to the parents of the student you just poisoned," Snape said.
She almost laughed as she reached for the dried nettle.
Five minutes later she brought the potion down from boiling and stood back. Snape stepped forward to inspect it.
"This is adequate," Snape said.
Lily began to smile.
"But I wouldn't expect anything less from a fourth-year brewing a first-year potion. Bottle this up and we'll start on the next one."
The smile faded from Lily's face, but she ladled the draft out into a bottle, wiped the drips up, and made to seal it up.
"What are you doing?" Snape barked. "Don't seal it yet, or else the steam will condense inside the bottle and the potion will decompose. Don't you know anything?"
"Sorry," Lily snapped. "You told me to bottle it."
"You should have been able to deduce what might have gone wrong. What happens when you spend eight hours hovering over a batch of Veritaserum only to finally bottle it and have it ruined before it even cools properly? Details!"
Lily's mouth thinned in the effort of swallowing a retort and she set the open bottle aside.
"Now take that cauldron and those utensils over to the sink and give them a quick scrub."
Lily did so without complaining, but it was a near thing. As she rinsed off the marble spoon, she glanced over her shoulder; Snape was leafing through one of the books he had stacked on the table, totally ignoring her.
She wandered back over a minute later and set the cauldron and the utensils down. "What next?" she asked.
"Hmm." He gave a low grunt, absorbed in whatever it was he was reading, and she watched as his hand wandered blindly over the stack of books to withdraw a sheet of parchment from between the pages of the first text. He handed it to her, still reading. "Here," he said, in the distant tones of one not paying particular attention to what one is saying; "the next potion. I copied it out of…." He trailed off for a moment, eyes flicking across the page, and then looked up. "The wizard's version of Fleau des Demons et des Sorciers. I've made a few adjustments to incorporate more basic ingredients than what Jean Bodin had listed."
Lily glanced over the list. It was Snape's handwriting, all right, crabbed and spiky and almost illegible. "I don't have any of these ingredients," Lily said after a moment, "except for the vervain."
"I know," said Snape. "Most of these ingredients aren't included in the standard potions kit. I've brought some from my own stores." He indicated a small wooden box that had been hiding behind the stack of books. "Now," he said, coming around the table to examine the inside of her still-slightly-damp cauldron, "this potion I guarantee you're unfamiliar with. It's on the sixth-year syllabus, and while not particularly time-consuming, it incorporates most elements of potions-brewing – meticulously prepared ingredients, intricate brewing process, and a certain degree of volatility before being properly completed. If one – that is to say, you – does not pay proper attention to the details, it is very likely to result in an explosion."
He seemed amused at Lily's expression.
She turned her eyes back to the parchment, skimming the list again. "If I may ask," she said, "what exactly is this potion for?"
"From the ingredients, what do you surmise?" Snape replied instead.
Lily scanned the list of ingredients. "It looks, " she said slowly, "like a draft of protection against… jinxes… and the like. Or is it a curative?"
"Both, actually," Snape said. "Its purpose is ambidextrous. Do you have your wand with you?" he asked suddenly.
Lily patted her left sleeve. "Wouldn't go anywhere without it," she said.
"A simple 'yes' or 'no' would have sufficed," Snape said irritably. "Take it out." Lily did so, and Snape withdrew his from his own sleeve. "You'll need your wand for a particular stage in the process. Repeat after me. Bilanx et aboleo."
"Bilanx eddaboleo," Lily muttered.
"Slow down," Snape said. "Enunciate. Et. Aboleo. Bilanx et aboleo."
Lily repeated it for a second time and got it right. "What's it mean?" she asked.
"It's Latin," Snape said. "Literally, balance and destroy. To balance the humours and destroy the bad ones. You will recite that while you stir the potion with your wand."
"Ah," Lily said, in tones of great understanding. She knew what humours were. "All right."
"Get started," Snape said.
This tonic was considerably more difficult than the Warming Draft. The preparation of the ingredients had to be, as Snape had said, meticulously exact, and more than once she found Snape correcting the angle of her knife or the motion of her pestle with a snapped command and a directing application of his own fingers. And more than once did she have to consult him concerning a particular ingredient, as his handwriting was so abominably indecipherable that she almost couldn't read half of it.
"What's this say?" she asked, pointing at a cramped phrase. "I can't read your handwriting."
"Pickled murtlap growth," said Snape, glancing over the parchment. "You should have checked that before you began the potion," he added. "And try not to let the juice escape. It all has to go in."
Lily continued with the potion, wrinkling her nose a little bit at the foul, briny smell of the anemone-like growth, but she didn't complain out loud. It wouldn't amount to anything, and it wasn't as if murtlap was poisonous.
With the threat of an explosion looming over her, Lily was very careful in her work. She took painstaking measures in the readying of the ingredients, and in stirring and adding them at the precise times, and even so, though she avoided any really embarrassing mistakes, the finished product Snape declared to be imperfect.
"It's not a complete waste," he said as he held the still-smoking bottle up to the light, "but it's not half as effective as it should be. The colour is quite off, and the consistency, as well."
Lily stared up at the bottle. It looked almost exactly the same as any other potion she had brewed – they all did in the end, turning an unattractive shade of mud. Generally, this was not a sign of poor brewing but the result of a miscellany of weird, earthy ingredients mixed together. "How can you tell?"
"See the flecks of orange sinking towards the bottom?" Snape gave the concoction a quick slosh. "They should be more vibrant, and they should stay evenly dispersed throughout the potion." Quite abruptly, he set the potion down on the table. "The tonique de curatif is intended as a multipurpose elixir. In its perfect state, it heals minor curse-related injuries and maladies, and, when drunken, it lends a minor, temporary resistance to further curses and hexes. The latter power is slight, but when properly brewed it does take some effect. This, however, will only be useful as a cure, and not a very fine one at that." He glared at her.
Lily found herself rather ashamed of herself, but she knew it wasn't entirely her fault. "Well, it was a new potion," she said, "and quite an advanced one at that."
"That's no excuse," Snape growled. "This particular potion I've been brewing for three years now. I was only twelve when I first brewed it."
"And I'll bet you didn't do any better than I did on your first try," Lily said, though she wondered why Snape would have learned such a potion at such a young age. "It's okay, you can seethe all you want; I'm going to congratulate myself that it'll work at all."
Snape's black eyes went wide for a moment, and his already pale cheeks went even whiter. "You think this is acceptable?" His voice was flooded with incredulous disbelief. "When are you going to take this seriously? It's not – "
"Snape, you take everything too seriously," Lily said frankly. "I'm just glad I didn't blow us up, and that what I made can be used for something, even if it won't be as effective as something, for example, that you made." She grinned suddenly. "I'm here for a price, anyway. What's the use in it if I do it perfectly the first time? Then I'd only owe you one transfiguration lesson, and that wouldn't be much use, would it?"
Snape seemed, for once, too mad to counter that. "Clean this up," he spat. "And dry those silver utensils particularly well; if they end up spotty you're replacing them."
Lily gathered up the dirty potions things without comment and took them to the sink. She wondered if he expected her to do a shoddy job; if he did, he was bound to be disappointed: she had been washing dishes since she was six and hadn't once tarnished any silverware.
"Snape?" she called over the gurgle of water. "Could you tell me what exactly you're having trouble with in transfiguration?" She glanced over her shoulder; Snape was again leafing through one of the books he'd brought; he looked up as she spoke, a scowl on his face. "I just want to know what to prepare for," she explained.
He didn't answer for a minute, and just when she was getting ready to shake the water from her hands and turn around, he spoke. "At the moment," he said, sounding extremely reluctant to divulge such information to Lily; "I am experiencing the most difficulty transforming inanimate objects to an animate ones."
Lily nodded. "All right," she said, making a mental note to herself. "Like turning a doornail into a dormouse. We can start on that first." She dried a silver spoon on the underside of her robe in the absence of a towel. "I found a good room today, by the way. On the third floor. It's next to the painting of Archibald the Lightheaded and the dog." She finished drying the last knife and turned around. "It's rather dusty, but I imagine it'll be fine once it's cleaned up a little bit…. Speaking of which, do you have any plans for tidying up this room?"
"If anything," Snape said, "I'll call for a house elf."
Lily hadn't thought of that. "Good idea," she said, causing Snape to look a little startled. "Though this place'll need a score of them to fix it up in time for next lesson." She wiped her hands off on her robes and changed the subject. "I finished up with your things," she said. "Everything's been dried quite well, and if there's nothing else, I'll be heading down to dinner now."
Snape held up a finger. "In a moment. I've a book for you to look over during the week."
Interested, Lily came forward, joining him at the table. He handed her a ragged-looking volume. Embossed on the cover was the title Potiens Interdiu, Potiens de Nocte, beneath which was the image of a ribbon-bound spray of herbs juxtaposed by a sharply curved sickle.
"On page eighty-three there is a recipe," said Snape. "Make an attempt to memorize it, and read the preceding bit about the significance of various herb-harvesting methods."
Lily flipped the book open, scanning age-spotted pages with an intrigued eye. "This is your book?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, sounding rather dangerous, "and I'd be careful with it if I were you. There are four different hexes on the spine alone, and if you dare to dog-ear a page I refuse to reaffix your fingers."
"I'll be careful with it," Lily said, her grip on the book now rather more sensitive.
"See that you are," Snape said.
"Is that it?"
"For now. I suppose I'll see you on Thursday."
"On the third floor," Lily reminded him, and, after putting her scattered things into her bag, she left.
"Bet you can't guess where I was," Lily said as she slid into a seat across from Sirius, who was already halfway through a bowl of soup.
Peter Pettigrew, sitting beside him, looked up as Lily pulled a basket of rolls towards her. "Quidditch pitch," he guessed.
"Nope. Try again."
"Owlery," Sirius tried, slurping at a spoonful of soup.
Lily shook her head. "Wrong."
"In the library?" Peter asked.
"You'll never guess," Lily said, spooning broccoli on her plate. "Hey, Remus, what are you reading?"
Remus, sitting on Sirius's other side, looked up from a slim book. He looked haggard, but he offered a smile. "Grissell Gardner," he said by way of explanation. "Burnt as a witch in sixteen-ten. She was one of the few true witches to be executed in such a way."
Sirius snorted into his soup. "Bet she was a Hufflepuff," he said. At Lily's stern look, he shrugged and said defensively, "Nobody else would've allowed himself to get caught without a wand!"
Lily gave him a look of dislike. "It's terrible how prejudiced some people can be," she said.
"I second that," Remus echoed. Sirius's expression only became more defiant, and Lily was once again unpleasantly reminded that he was a pureblood boy born of an old Slytherin family. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak Lily interrupted him.
"Let's not get into a big discussion about this," she said quickly.
Sirius glared at her. "What's there to discuss, Evans?"
Lily smiled. "Precisely."
"But think about it," Sirius protested. "Would a Gryffindor be walking around in the sixteenth century – "
"Seventeenth," Lily corrected.
"Whatever. Would a Gryffindor just walk around in the seventeenth century without a wand? Totally unprotected? I don't think so, not with all the Slytherins wandering around – and the Ravenclaws are just too smart – "
Lily rolled her eyes. "And a smart Ravenclaw might come to the conclusion that waving an occultish stick around might come off as a bit suspicious. And there certainly weren't that many true witches and wizards, Slytherin or not, 'wandering around' in those times – most of them were in hiding with their covens." She rolled her eyes. "Magic folk didn't have time to lynch each other. They were too busy hiding from the Muggles."
"Someone should have told that to the Blacks," Sirius said darkly. "Our family had been actively feuding with the Potters since the fourteen-hundreds. No little Muggle Inquisition was going to get in the way of that."
The self-loathing in his voice made Lily drop her gaze and the subject. Well, it was no secret that Sirius was the white sheep of the family Black; he had been so from the moment he had been sorted into Gryffindor. Lily suspected that his friendship with James was a matter of defiance that had turned into something more genuine. The Potter-Black vendetta was practically legendary amongst the old-magic families.
Lily finished her dinner, talking quietly with Remus about Grissell Gardner and her Muggle occultist descendant Gerald. Once she had polished off the last of her potatoes she returned to Gryffindor Tower, relieved to finally be able to escape the now-moody presence of Sirius and get to her studies.
It was well past eight o'clock when she finally finished up her last essay – a particularly dull History of Magic assignment – and got around to the book Snape had lent her. It was an arcane little volume and, as Lily, laying flat on her back on her bed, opened it for the second time that evening, she felt a rather queer anticipation for the knowledge Snape was imparting to her through this tome – but as she began reading it, she realized, with a sheepish disappointment, that it was rather boring and not really anything new. The section about the harvesting of various herbs was fairly straightforward and rather obvious, and the potion that Snape had instructed her to memorize turned out to be a process for a wizarding kind of superglue. The undodgyness of it was anticlimactic; arcane little volumes with names like Potiens Interdiu, Potiens de Nocte should have contained formulas for foreign, grey-magic sorts of brews, not recipes for paste.
Lily laughed at this thought, and at her own expectations. She was reacting as if she was dismayed. She laughed louder at this thought, curling up on her side as giggles shook her, earning her a strange, annoyed glance from Cordelia, who was reading in the window seat.
"What's so funny?" the other girl asked.
"Paste," Lily laughed. "Just paste."
"Yeah, I'll bet it's just paste," Cordelia muttered. "Bet you've just been sniffing it. You know," she said in a louder voice, "we have Astronomy in a couple hours."
"I know," Lily said. "And I have every intention to take a nap beforehand. Honestly, if there's one thing I miss about Muggle schools it's that all the classes took place in broad daylight."
"Lucky Muggles," Cordelia said in tones of such envy that Lily laughed again.